


love in withdrawal

by albinomagpie



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Masturbation, Pining, weird and a little sad but thats life baby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 12:15:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20778407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/albinomagpie/pseuds/albinomagpie
Summary: You’re thirteen, gawky, loud and crass andtoo much, and most importantly, in those moments, you’re the sole object of Eddie Kaspbrak’s attention.





	love in withdrawal

You’re thirteen years old, and this is the summer that you fall in love with a boy and fear makes a permanent home in your heart. 

You’ve always been the loudmouth of your group; you always have something to say about everyone around you. He’s different, though – you’re relentless in your teasing with him, just because you can, and his sharp retorts send a spark up your spine and bring easy laughter to your lips.

It’s been this way since you met him, and you can tell your friends are getting tired of it. They roll their eyes, looking at each other in exasperation whenever you two start bickering. You see it, and you want to stop, except for that stopping seems impossible once you’ve gotten started. He gets so worked up every single time, brow furrowed and incensed finger jabbed in your direction, and it makes you feel euphoric. You’re thirteen, gawky, loud and crass and _too much_, and most importantly, in those moments, you’re the sole object of Eddie Kaspbrak’s attention.

That’s how it starts. You revel in these moments of unfiltered ire from Eddie, seldom stopping to think about exactly why you provoked him in the first place. Sometimes, he gets close, up in your face to spit an angry response to whatever distasteful comment you’ve undoubtedly just made, and a nameless emotion rises in your chest. It’s thick and hot and far stronger than anything else your young brain has ever experienced.

You start seeing the headlines around this time.

_Terrible things,_ the adults around you whisper, _just awful. But, but,_ they say like a prayer, _if it must happen, better it happen to those types of men than the rest of us. Deviant lifestyles, yes, of course, that’s the reason they’re dead._

When your friends try to bring the subject up, you joke with faux-brightness about how you’re too busy getting pussy to follow the news, and if the rest of them wanted to sit around discussing current events like virgins then they could count you out.

What had seemed before like trivialities now become secrets. You don’t think you can stop teasing him and bickering with him and pressing as close to him as you can under pretense after pretense. So you keep doing it, only now under a thin veil of shame, a straitjacket that no one can know is there.

The pressure in your chest builds surprisingly fast. It becomes all-consuming, too much in the face of this enormous horror that should be occupying your thoughts, instead of the boy you’re trying desperately not to be in love with. And it’s sad, isn’t it? Sad that there’s a sort of relief in this tangible monster, because you can avoid the suffocating realization of something that, statistically, is more likely to get you killed.

This is the summer in which you bike to the Kissing Bridge with your father’s pocketknife and carve your initial and his in big scratchy letters over the weathered wood. You don’t allow yourself to dwell, knowing this small act is not worth getting cut up by Henry Bowers and his gang. It still feels like deliverance.

You make new friends, your group falls apart and gets back together, you defeat one obstacle and tuck another close to your heart. Blood drips from your palm on a balmy September afternoon and you clasp Eddie’s hand tightly in your own, praying that this feeling gets easier.

***

You’re fifteen, and although you’ve escaped an evil entity older than the oldest building in your town, keeping your secret is the hardest thing you’ve ever done. You compensate, perhaps overly so, with loud statements about your extensive list of female conquests and declarations about how hot any given woman is, whether your opinion is asked or not.

Your little group has shifted somewhat, with Bev gone to Portland, but the rest of you stay close. You get together on a crisp October Friday because you’re all fifteen and restless and full to bursting with emotions you don’t quite know what to do with, and you get incredibly drunk. Bill and Mike are shotgunning cans of beer, the amber liquid gushing over their laughing mouths, as Stan looks on in quiet amusement. Eddie’s lying in the hammock, cheeks flushed pink with booze and the growing warmth of the little clubhouse that you’ve all grown a little bit too big for, looking for all the world like the most irresistible thing you’ve ever seen. You allow yourself some leeway on nights like these, head swimming in stolen whiskey mixed with cheap dime store sodas. 

The hammock dips as you climb into it, despite Eddie’s cry of protest.

“Quit it, dipshit, my turn isn’t up yet!” he says indignantly. You’re reminded fiercely of the last time you did this, before you ventured down into the sewers, when your group was still on its shaky first legs. His voice has dropped a little since then, but then again, so has yours. Your bodies have grown too, both of you looking more like young men than the children you were.

You’re abruptly reminded of this fact as you bed down into the hammock alongside Eddie, your bodies pressing together far more intensely than you remember.

“We’re way too big for this,” Eddie grumbles.

“Hey Eds,” you say, “payback time is now.” And you stick a socked foot in his face, ruffling his hair with it so fiercely that the hammock shakes.

“Ugh, Richie, stop!” He scowls, lifting his hands up to shove your leg off. You relent, laughing big and open like you always do around him. From the cassette player in the corner, David Bowie croons, _Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles I'm feeling very still…_  
_I’m feeling,_ you think, giddy from the booze and the sensation of his skin against yours, _I’m feeling, I’m feeling._

***

You’re eighteen, and your best friend is leaving Derry. College was something that used to seem distant, like something that might happen in another life. You’ve known for a couple of years now that Eddie would be going to college, along with Ben and Stanley, and that you would be left behind. It never used to bother you; you had made your peace with it. Maybe part of you thought that when the time came you would move into a tiny apartment with Eddie in whatever college town he wanted, tangled together in a double bed far away from the claustrophobic streets of small-minded Derry. You had thought it in the way that people think their lives will be different in one, five, ten years time. You had thought it, but, terrified of your own heart, had neglected to do anything about it. 

The summer after graduation elapses faster than you had ever thought it would, and the talk (read: gossip) about your peers had turned into college talk, long meandering conversations about impending adulthood. With Eddie, Ben, and Stanley all off to different colleges, you think maybe you should consider moving as well. Derry’s a shithole, you’ve always known it, but the idea of leaving everything and everyone here behind had seemed incomprehensible until now.

On the night before they leave, you, Mike, and Bill throw a going away party for the soon-to-be collegiate members of your group. It’s standard as far as your usual weekend gatherings go, but a melancholy haze wraps itself around the dusty clubhouse and the party disbands before midnight. You follow your friends up the ladder and onto the dewy grass, heads spinning with alcohol, to wish a final farewell to your group as you’ve known it in the past five years. You hug Stanley, and then Ben, joking raucously about how jealous you are of the sheer amount of pussy they’re sure to get in college. When you get to Eddie, though, you find yourself unable to speak, all the words you want to say clogging up your throat. That old familiar feeling rises hot and expansive in your chest until you feel like if you open your mouth your love will come spilling out, flooding the ground like the slick black poison out of Eddi- no, out of _It’s_ mouth so long ago. 

In the end, you simply pull him in, and hold him as close to your body as you can, head too fuzzy with beer to resist the urge that has been picking at your brain for the entire night. He buries his face in your shoulder, you feel his breath hot against your neck, and your vision swims. 

“Bye, Rich. Make sure to write to me, okay?” He whispers. And _god_, you can feel his lips moving against your skin.

You know your expression must look like a man starving, and before you can even muster up a single word of response, he’s broken away and everyone is heading in different directions. Your friends exchange waves over shoulders until darkness swallows them up, and you feel overwhelmed. The cool night air feels frigid against your neck, against the spot where his skin rested only minutes ago.

When you get home, you rush quietly into your bedroom and lock your door, palming yourself through your shorts. You’re achingly hard, frantic with shame and lust and the feeling of smooth lips and barely-there stubble against your throat. Eddie’s voice, deeper with every passing year and hushed to a murmur, his flushed cheeks, wide brown eyes, _hot breath_ – your hips stutter once, twice, and you spill over your hand with a moan. 

Almost immediately, guilt floods you and you feel more sober than you’ve ever been in your life. 

_You’re disgusting,_ the voice in your head that sounds vaguely like Eddie says. 

_God, I know,_ you think.

You wipe your hand on your grubby jeans and fall immediately into bed, letting sleep wash out the shame coloring your cheeks.

***

You move to California a year later. Your plan is to do comedy, because that’s the one thing you’ve always been good at — loudmouthed Richie, always has a joke for every situation. 

You’ve worked up a feeble routine, and within a few years of moving you’ve become somewhat of a regular in the comedy scene. You hire a ghostwriter because you don’t say anything authentic onstage anyways, so you might as well say something funny. In your first meeting he asks you if you have a girlfriend, and you shake your head quickly. 

_He knows,_ the now-familiar voice in your head says.

The writer just shrugs, jots something on his pad of paper.

“Ah well, I’ll put it in anyways. You’ll get one eventually, if I do my job right.” 

You give a feeble smile and don’t meet his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you liked it! constructive criticism is welcome. i know the style is a little weird but hopefully it worked alright, i had fun writing it. title's from would that i by hozier.
> 
> also, in the movies the hate crime happens when they're 40, not 13, but i changed it here because of the implications :/
> 
> follow me on [tumblr](https://walloes.tumblr.com/)


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